If you have ever been to one of my dream meetings, you will almost always hear me say that snakes are about change, transformation especially at the beginning stages of change, but there is hardly another animal on the planet that evokes so much fear as a snake. Part of the problems with snakes is …
Earlier this morning, when I went out for one of my normal midweek holiday runs toward KL’s Lake Gardens, an interesting question made its way into my head. The question was this. Is there a place you can go where all of the changes that you want to make in yourself already exist? What was …
For the longest time I have been dealing with my own development by focusing my attention on two types of character origins. The first has to do with the issues that arise out of the issues that come from family because we all inherit strengths and weaknesses and it is the job of the current …
Most of the cultures and religions in the world have classified spiritual energy into four categories which are the heart, mind, body, and spirit. Jesus said, for instance, that we should love God with all of our heart, mind, spirit, and strength. In dream language or mythological language such as in native stories the four …
I realized not too long ago that I was really tired of being in conflict with leaders so today I made the decision that instead of focusing on them, that I would place my attention entirely on going for my own goals rather than fighting against theirs. As I am writing this right now it …
Last week, our 4th grandchild, Will Shoghi Heins-Hastings, made his transition from the world of the womb to the outside world. I wrote about this in the last posting. Being there at Will’s birth made an impression on me that I cannot put to words because there is nothing quite like holding a newborn. Right …
In my last post I mentioned seeing a newspaper article about JFK in the interview room of a newspaper in Sabah so I decided to look up a few quotes from JFK and post them here. Enjoy them. A child miseducated is a child lost. A man does what he must – in spite of …
Sabah is a federal territory of Malaysia, not a state in its own right. It is like the Yukon or the how the Northwest Territories used to be in Canada. It, like Sarawak is located on the northern part of the island of Borneo which Malaysia shares with Indonesia. We arrive in Kota Kinabalu, K.K. …
I have to admit that when I started to feel the inner whispers that my being was calling forth the virtue of self discipline, it wasn’t something that I necessarily wanted to hear. After all, I mean let’s face it. Self discipline is not sexy like some other energies. When I pick self discipline out …
I just spent more than 30 hours during the weekend as a tournament director for a high school tennis tournament in which 9 schools from all over Southeast Asia participated. At the end of the day there were more than 200 sets played. We began our days at 6:00 AM and finished around 10:00 PM. …
I have met with many people in recent weeks who seem to have the same brutal energy affecting them strongly when they are in the midst of trying to change their lives. They seem to be caught up in the cultural myth that says that if I get enough love, then suddenly my life will …
Last weekend at the Baha’i School in Kota Tinggi I went to a workshop on virtues and discovered that I needed the virtue of trusting more, especially trusting in God. So I am reflecting on it here to see what it means. When I was teaching ethics classes in Brazil, I used to do a …
I am not sure if many people have reflected on this question on where God is, so I decided to throw out a few thoughts to share some of my observations. What I have observed is that the location of God seems to move around according to the cultural context. In the Judeo-Christian culture that …
Last week during one of my physical education classes with my 5 year olds I witnessed and incredible act of leadership that left me with a great feeling of hope. I have a young boy in one class whose frustration tolerance on a scale from 1-10 is minus 6 or 7. He has had a …
Last April my wife and traveled to Vietnam. So here I am in the middle of Hanoi about 9 am in the morning faced with the challenge of crossing a busy street with 2 million motorcycles and no traffic lights. This could possibly be a North American’s worst nightmare because in the U.S. pedestrians have …
One of the great aspects of the dream world is its interesting way of dealing with time. You can be asleep in your bed and within a very short span of time travel to several different countries. While we are wake, we are governed by the clock that is determined by the earth’s journey around …
One of the activities I often do when I do a dream meeting is to place out a number of virtue cards on a table where each person chooses the one that is most needed in their life right now such as courage, honesty, determination, love, joy, or patience to name a few. I always …
Last night I dreamt that my son-in-laws and I were behind the lines in pre-World War 2 Germany doing undercover work against the Nazis. At every turn we were nearly brutally murdered, but somehow we managed to escape only to find more threats more numerously as the dream progressed. When I awoke from the dream, …
There is a prayer in the Baha’i writings that many Baha’is use often. The last line says, “Thou are more friend to me than I am to myself.” This prayer deals with the anxiety of an uncertain future and the ability to embrace it. When I read the prayer and meditate on its implications, it …
Olee was born in November, 2005. He is my second grandson. About 2 weeks after he was born I started teaching 5 and 6 years olds wall climbing at my school for the very first time. I was learning just as much as they were especially about how to use all 4 limbs on the …
This year I am celebrating the 10 anniversary of the first time that I was ever fired from a job. I was a small child in the 1950s when loyalty was still a value in society. I still tend to believe too much in the leadership and stay too long in organizations because I still …
The big problem with guilt is that it makes you loyal for too long to something you should have left a long time ago. While I am a baby boomer by birth, in recent years I have come to admire more and more how generation X operates because the “boomers” keep looking for good leaders …
There is a huge secret to all transformation work which I have yet to find in the literature. Behind every negative emotion like anger, envy, grief, shame, or guilt is another feeling. It is always the fear of being excluded in one form or another. It turns out that the most importance competency for human …
Today we crossed back from Vancouver Island to the Mainland and Juliet, my daughter told me that I should write more about my methodology. In my last posting I said that I would write about guilt, but I will save that for the time being. The first principle of the method is simple. Just keep …
If some of you out there who are reading this posting are workaholics, I have a confession to make to you. I am a playaholic. I know so many people who just don’t have enough time to finish all of their work ever. They are obsessed with it. Well, I never get enough time to …
The nightmare: I was with a bunch of people who were all something like FBI agents. Our goal was to capture someone by cornering him and making him give up. It was working. We just about had him completely cornered,then the dream shifted to a completely different place where we were searching for the same …
There are literally thousands of books available all over the world on parenting which play an extremely important role in helping mothers and fathers do their life’s most crucial work in positive ways. Several years ago I started experimenting with the radical idea that if I changed my own self, then my children and others …
Richard Hastings is an expert in change work and dream work and author of Dreams for Peace. He is a Baha'i and currently lives in Vancouver, BC. Read more...
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